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JLLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND 
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S 
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA, 



NO. 35, APRIL, 1920 



Elizabethan Society: A Sketch 



BY 
J. B. BLACK 



The Jackson Press, Kingston 



'MQUtti rai 



BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND 

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S 

UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA. 



No. 1, The Colonial Policy of Chatham, by W. L. Grant. 

No. 2, Canada and the Most Favored Nation Treaties, by 
O. D. Skelton. 

No. 3. The Status of Women in New England and New France, 
by James Douglas. 

No. 4, Sir Charles Bagot: An Incident in Canadian Parlia- 
mentary History, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 5, Canadian Bank Inspection, by W. W. Swanson. 

No. 6, Should Canadian Cities Adopt Commission Govern- 
ment, by William Bennett Munro. 

No. 7, An Early Canadian Impeachment, by D. A. McArthur. 

No. 8, A Puritan at the Court of Louis XIV, by W. L. Grant 

No. 9, British Supremacy and Canadian Autonomy: An Ex- 
amination of Early Victorian Opinion Concerning 
Canadian Self-government, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 10, The Problem of Agricultural Credit in Canada, by 
H. Michell. 

No. 11, St. Alban in History and Legend: A Critical Examina- 
tion; The King and His Councillors: Prolegomena to 
a History of the House of Lords, by L. F. Rushbrook 
Williams. 

No. 12f Life of the Settler in Western Canada Before the War 
of 1812, by Adam Shortt. 

No. 13, The Grange in Canada, by H. Michell. 

No. 14, The Financial Power of the Empire, by W.W. Swanson. 

(Continued on inside back page J; 



Gift 

^"EivorrJty 
Ati 7 192Q 






<& 



ELIZABETHAN SOCIETY— A SKETCH. 



ELIZABETHAN England is like a harvested field whose 
crops have long since been garnered by armies of un- 
pretentious, industrious, and well-equipped scholars. The 
fruits of their labours lie in that superb granary of Elizabeth- 
an gleanings — the New Shakespeare Text Society publications. 
For the belated labourer little now remains but the dusty 
footprints of his predecessors and an occasional derelict straw. 
Even the task of summing up the research of a generation 
has successfully been accomplished in the two splendid vol- 
umes recently issued by the Clarendon Press.* Consequently 
it is to be doubted if anything new can be said, either by way 
of fresh discovery or by way of a synthesis of existing 
materials. Nevertheless, there are features, aspects and 
contrasts in the multi-coloured life of the time which will 
bear restatement and possibly gain by it. To the historian, 
who labours sombrely at the treadmill of political and con- 
stitutional documents, and writes, so to speak, with an eye 
on Magna Carta all the time, an escape into the popular 
Forum of the London streets, where politics were at a dis- 
count, is a bracing tonic and at the same^time a corrective to 
overmuch abstraction. ^^ 

Historically speaking, theneflitics of the masses are al- 
most always simple and ujamvolved, bemuse as a rule, the 
bulk of men accept thp^oeial andjadntical order prescribed 
for them. In the stalled "spariprfsdays" of the 16th century 
they were exceptionally simpJ^T The multitudes who thronged 
the streets^?! Elizabethan London, or congregated in the 
theatres, bear-garden^' and Paul's Walk, cannot by any pos- 
sibility be terme^^ fiery breed of men who spent their days 
in theological %nd political disputation. Indeed it is to be 
doubted whether they had at any time more than a passing 
and spectacujfrf r *mterest in the larger issues of Church and 
State, an^rhe absorbing problems of government. Schisms 
and plots might keep Burghley and Walsingham awake o' 
nights, and occasionally drive the Queen into paroxysms of 

^Shakespeare's England, Oxford, 1916. 



2 

hysteria: these commotions in the royal boudoir, or Council 
Chamber, were looked upon as the inevitable afflictions of 
crowned heads, and of the grave men to whom was committed 
the task of piloting the ship of state into port: they seldom 
influenced the mental environment of the street, or darkened 
the path of the plain man. He was content to take his religion 
and political beliefs on trust from his superiors ; and when he 
attended a "hanging, drawing and quartering" at Tower 
Hill, or stood by to hear the government proclamations at 
Paul's Cross, he did so, much in the same spirit as when he 
paid his ten doits to see a dead Indian, or gazed open-mouthed 
after Shan O'Neill's motley bodyguard of wild Ulstermen: 
that is — he marvelled at, and accepted it all, as part of the 
diurnal process of Nature. That this is not an exaggerated 
description of the mentality of the age, may be seen from 
the following remarkable words of an observant Venetian, 
then resident in London. The example and authority of the 
Sovereign are everything," he writes, . . . "and they would 
make themselves Jews or Mahometans according as the 
prince would demand or adopt." In any case, however we 
may account for it, the fact remains that in the crowded 
thoroughfares and popular resorts of the capital, where all 
classes met and jostled, the prevailing tone was essentially 
objective, exuberant, sateguine, and uncritical. "Puritan" and 
"papist" — terms that embody in themselves the whole firm- 
ament of differences between Geneva and Rome, were after 
all only relative, and both were suh^med up in the absolute 
term "patriot." The typical Englishman of the period was 
not a party man, but a Queen^s* man, a devoted supporter of 
royalty and a passionate worshipper even of if's^aults. On 
what other ground may we account for the obvious popularity 
of that "artistic abortion" — the History Play — except that it 
brought the panoplied kings and nobility of England on the 
common stage to blare out the threadbare jingoism of the 
day? Then, again, what event in the civic annals can be 
compared in popularity with the royal "progress" from West- 
minister to the Tower? The plain fact is, everyone had the 
good of the nation at heart. From that acrid and boldest of 
puritans, John Stubbs, who had his right hand chopped off 
for inditing a pamphlet against the Queen's threatened 



French marriage, to the intrepid Jesuit martyr, Edmund 
Campion, whose preaching was deemed to be destructive of 
the State — all who suffered or died during the reign for 
conscience sake or for so-called political crimes, did so with 
a prayer for their country and a salutation to Elizabeth on 
their lips. Clearly the immense personal popularity of the 
Queen dwarfed everything else. She was "the most English 
woman in England," the modern "Jephthah, judge and re- 
storer of Israel", the pledge and security of national great- 
ness. 

Of course this cult of the Queen had other than purely 
psychological and sentimental grounds. The test to which 
any government in modern times is submitted, and by which 
it stands or falls, is essentially a practical one. Does it secure 
the necessary conditions for a full and free expansion of the 
creative and productive energies of the nation? In other 
words, internal peace, -freedom, and economic prosperity are 
the criteria which the average man, as a rule, applies to 
government policy, and in terms of which he applauds or 
condemns. Popularity is a matter of opinion, not of principle. 
Now, in Elizabeth's day these conditions, on the whole, were 
amply fulfilled. Never before had the commercial and in- 
dustrial classes enjoyed so prodigious a prosperity: never in 
its history did the country feel so free from civil broils; and 
never was the feeling of military superiority to other nations 
so strongly marked. An old Armada couplet sums up the 
widespread optimism: — 

| "We'll not give up our Credo for pope, nor book, nor bell ; 

"And if the Devil himself should come, we"ll hound him back to hell." — 

To distil poetry out of economic prosperity must be a 
surpassingly difficult task: nevertheless the apparent peace 
and plenty of the times gave many a limping rhymester his 
cue for tiresome adulations of the food supply. In one of 
these crude compositions England is compared to "the kernel 
of the nut", and surrounding nations to "the shell". The bard 
proceeds : — 

"Here things are cheap and easily had:" 
"No soil the like can show:" 
"No State nor Kingdom at this day" 
"Doth in such plenty flow." 



4 

The pope might launch his thunderbolts of anathema and 
excommunication against the pretensa Angliae regina: he 
could not interfere with the steady forward movement of 
economic forces. Like foolish Balaam, to whom Bishop Jewel 
ventured to compare him in 1570, he "cursed the people of 
God," but his curses were turned to blessing; and "the more 
he cursed, the more England prospered." "Thanks be to God," 
wrote the worthy bishop, "never was it better in worldly 
peace, in health of body, and in abundance of corn and vict- 
uals." Or, as another anonymous poet put it: — 

"God, for her, doth clothe ye ground with store 
Of plenty and increase: 

Our barns are full, and barks can bear no more, 
And blessed are we with peace." 

Surely an unanswerable argument to the prognosticators 
of evil and an infallible support for the optimism of society! 
High Heaven had written its approval like an apocalypse 
across the face of the country. 

Such, then, was the atmosphere in which the vocal classes 
of Elizabethan England lived and moved and had their being. 
But there are other factors to be considered, which modify 
in detail this somewhat roseate picture. It was an age of 
unlimited self-expression — "robustious," ostentatious, licen- 
tious. Literature, social custom, dress, and mode of living, 
were merely the glasses in which the egoism of all classes 
reflected and admired itself. At the same time "covetous- 
ness" and a mad scramble for wealth were fashionable vices 
to which everyone was addicted. Each trade had its own 
special way of "pilling and polling" the public, and even the 
professions were no whit behind in the desire to grow rich 
quickly. Under the strain of this unbridled greed, the tra- 
ditional social restrictions — the old tripartite division of so- 
ciety, of which medieval writers speak — broke down irremedi- 
ably. Men were no longer categorised according to their call- 
ing and function in the State, but according to their possession 
or non-possession of wealth. A cash nexus and a proletariate 
made their simultaneous appearance. The reign of Elizabeth 
represents the transition period, when men had not yet ad- 
justed themselves mentally to the new conditions, when the 
government was still fumbling about for a solution of the 



5 

new problem of pauperism, and when all who possessed the 
wherewithal of enjoyment disowned responsibility to the poor. 
Beneath his brilliant exterior, the Elizabethan Englishman 
concealed very imperfectly a callous and cruel heart. 

But let us first consider the brighter side of the social 
drama. It is customary to regard the latter part of Eliza- 
beth's reign as the most poetic period in the history of Eng- 
land. "The quaint mystery of mounting conceit which sur- 
passeth all the invention and elocution in the world," could 
only express itself adequately in the winged words of poetry. 
Thus Wm. Webb wrote that "among the innumerable sorts 
of English books, and infinite fardels of printed pamphlets 
wherewith this country is pestered, every shop stuffed and 
every study furnished: the greatest part, I think, in any one 
kind, are such as are mere (i.e. pure) poetical or which tend 
in some respect (as either in matter or form) to poetry." 
But prose overflowed into poetry in other directions than 
literature. The "mounting conceit" of the artist in clothes 
revolutionised the old sartorial proprieties of the middle ages ; 
and, according to Camden, "this apish nation became mad 
with a rage for apparell, displaying a certain deformity and 
insolency of mind, jetting up and down in silks glittering 
with gold and silver." London, which had by this time be- 
come the metropolis and emporium of northern Europe, 
where all nations and fashions rubbed shoulders, cast off its 
medieval rags, donning the colours and gaiety of an Italian 
city. -."Forty years ago," writes Stafford, "there were not 
twelve haberdashers in London who sold fancy caps, glasses, 
swords, daggers, girdles; and now from the Tower to West- 
minster Abbey every street is full of them, and their shops 
glitter and shine of glass as well drinking as looking: yea all 
manner of vessels of the same stuff, painted cruses, gay dag- 
gers, knives, swords and girdles, that it is able to make any 
temperate man to gaze on them to long somewhat, though 
it serve to no purpose necessary." The Thames, greatest of 
Elizabethan commercial arteries, proved no less an endless 
source of wonder to native and foreigner alike: its forest of 
masts and bunting was symbolic of England's prosperity. 
"C'est chose magnifique," wrote De Maisse (French ambassa- 
dor) , "de voir la quantite de vaisseaux qui sont a l'ancre telle- 



ment que deux lieux durant vous ne voyez autre chose que 
vaisseaux . . ." But the psychology of the nation was the 
most startling feature in the situation. The craving for 
luxuries in every shape and form had become a disease. It 
did not matter that all the "glitter and shine" was paid for 
dearly in good coin of the realm, or by the export of valuable 
raw materials. "Fools," wrote the stern economist, "by 
means of this rage for foreign trash drain England annually 
of £100,000 !" Nor could the puritan satirist, who castigated 
the garish tastes of society with the fury of a Juvenal, arrest 
the headlong desire to spend. The rage for new things was 
insatiable. "Nothing is so constant," wrote Harrison, "as 
inconstancy in attire." "They be desirous of new-fangles," 
wrote Stubbs, "praising things past, condemning things pre- 
sent, and coveting things to come." Fynes Moryson, who had 
travelled more extensively than most men of the time, 
thought his own countrymen more sumptuous than the Per- 
sians — "because they affect all extremes." It was not the 
rich merchant and professional classes alone who flaunted 
their finery, their "silks, velvets and chains of gold," before 
the public eye. All who could scrape together the necessary 
money, followed suit — farmer, peasant, and artisan — even 
although it often drove them into beggary to do so. Many 
were the satirical comments on the vanity and presump- 
tion of the lower strata of society: the "dunghill drudges" 
and "presumptuous asses," as Green calls them, who did not 
scruple to "wear on their feet what Kings have worn on 
their heads," and "drowned themselves in the mercer's book" 
for the sake of being "clapped in a velvet pantoufle." Lodge, 
in "Wit's Miserie" gives a pretty picture of the ravages of 
fashion in the country. "The ploughman," he writes, "that 
in times past, was content in his russet, must nowadays have 
his doublet of the fashion with wide cuts, his garters of fine 
silk of Granada, to meet his Sis on Sunday. The farmer that 
was contented in times past with his russet frock and mock- 
ado sleeves, now sells a cow against Easter to buy new silken 
gear for his credit." To become a "court noil" and an "ac- 
complished gentleman" was a most expensive business. Ben 
Jonson satirically counsels all who aim at such to give over 
living in the country and hie themselves to the city, "where 



on your first appearance 'twere good you turned four or five 
hundred acres of your best land into two or three trunks of 
apparell !" 

Naturally a "Babylonian confusion" of classes ensued: 
the social world turned itself topsy-turvy. Bankrupts, play- 
ers, and cut-purses strutted about in gentleman's attire, and 
it was impossible to say from the "mingle-mangle" of dress 
who was noble, worshipful, gentle or even a yeoman. "To 
such outrage is it grown nowadays," writes the indignant 
Stubbs, "every butcher, shoemaker, tailer, cobbler, husband- 
man, and others : yea every tinker, pedlar, and swineherd, and 
every artificer and other gregarii ordinis of the vilest sort of 
men must be called by the vain name of masters at every 
turn." 

Contemporary writers are never tired of expatiating on 
the highly artificial and bizarre nature of Elizabethan cos- 
tume, the multiplicity of dresses, and the whimsical character 
of public taste. In the "Seven Deadly Sins of London," 
Dekker picturesquely assembles (or distributes) the male 
costume thus: "The Englishman's dress is like a traitor's 
body, that hath been hanged, drawn, and quartered, and is 
set up in various places: his cod-piece is in Denmark, the 
collar of his doublet and the belly in France: the wing and 
narrow sleeve in Italy: the short waist hangs over a Dutch 
butcher's stall in Utrecht: his huge stops speak Spanishly . . . 
And thus we that mock every nation for keeping of one 
fashion yet steal patches from every one of them to piece out 
our pride." The Book of Homilies, issued in 1562 for the use 
of the pulpit, is perhaps a more reliable source of information 
than any other; but here too the same note of wild extrava- 
gance is struck. In one of the sermons, entitled "Excess of 
Apparell," we read that it was customary for men to keep 
a rich variety of gowns (cloaks) — one for the day and one 
for the night, one for summer and one for winter, one through- 
furred and one only faced, one for the working day and one 
for the holy day, one of cloth and another of silk or damask, 
one for dinner and another after, one of Spanish fashion and 
another of Turkish, etc. "Therefore," continues the homilist, 
"a certain man that would picture every countryman in his 
accustomed apparel, when he painted other nations, he pictur- 



8 

ed the Englishman all naked and gave him cloth under his 
arm and bade him make it himself as he knew best, for he 
changed his fashion so often that he knew not how to make 
it." An old wood-cut is actually extant, representing this 
naked, whimsical Englishman. With a pair of tailor's shears 
in his hand and a roll of cloth under his arm, he gives utter- 
ance to the following doggerel : 

"I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, 
"Musing in my mind what raiment I shall wear; 
"For now I will wear this and now I will wear that; 
"Now I will wear I cannot tell what." 

No less noteworthy than the decorative treatment of 
dress was the minute attention paid to the hair, beard and 
moustache. The London coiffeur indeed rivalled the tailor in 
the new and startling "cuts" he purveyed, and the wealth of 
his perfumes, unguents and powders. Thus in the same way 
as the old-fashioned simple garb of the Middle Ages vanished 
before the onslaught of the new sartorial fashions, the "rank" 
medieval "Christ's Cut" which gave the head the appearance 
of "a Holland cheese" — as if it had been "cut round by a dish," 
fell out of use before the more pretentious and picturesque 
styles of Italy, France and Spain. Apparently many men 
affected the Italian manner, "short and round and frounced 
with curling irons so as to look like a half moon in a mist": 
others aped the Spaniard's predilection for wearing the hair 
"long at the ears and curled"; but not a few were cap- 
tivated with the French love-lock, drooping on the shoulders, 
"where you may wear your mistress' favour." Of course the 
beard and moustache received the same delicate and careful 
attention, "almost changing the accidents into the substance." 
The former might be "short and sharp amiable like an ina- 
morato" or "broad pendant like a spade to be terrible like a 
warrior and a soldado," while the latter was, as a rule, "fost- 
ered about the ears like the branches of a vine," or "cut down 
to the lip in the Italian fashion." But the barber was es- 
sentially an artist at his trade, capable of suiting his tech- 
nique to the physiognomy of his client. "And therefore," 
wrote Harrison, "if a man have a lean and straight face, a 
Marquess Otto's cut will make it broad and large: if it be 
platter-like, a long slender beard will make it seem narrower: 



if he be weasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will 
make its owner look big like a bowdled hen, and as grim as a 
goose, if Cornells of Chelmsford say true." 

It should not be imagined, however, that all this apparent 
effeminacy involved any real softening of the fibre of the race. 
It was not merely a richly dressed and highly perfumed but 
a "militant civility" that paraded the London streets. Every 
man from the age of eighteen bore some kind of lethal wea- 
pon — a sword, rapier, or dagger, possibly both rapier and 
dagger. "Desperate cutters," says Harrison, carried two 
daggers or two rapiers, "wherewith in drunken fray they are 
known to work much mischief." Even the labouring man in 
the country had his sword, buckler and bow by his side, ex- 
cept when actually working in the fields, when he laid them 
clown in a convenient corner. Apprentices, too, had their 
knives, parsons their "hangers" or daggers, and ladies their 
bodkins. It appears to have been the tendency of the arme 
blanche to grow steadily longer, for in 1580 the government 
was compelled to issue a proclamation restricting the length 
of swords to three feet, and daggers to twelve inches, in- 
clusive of the handle! Obviously street fighting must have 
been a common occurrence and a serious menace to public 
order. The Elizabethan swashbuckler was prepared to throw 
away his life for a comparatively small matter. In Ascham's 
words, he had "a factious heart, a discoursing head and a mind 
to meddle in all men's affairs." Mercutio's taunt to Benvolio 
shows him in action: "Thou wilt quarrel with a man for 
cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast 
hazel eyes . . . thou hast quarrelled with a man for cough- 
ing in the street because he hath wakened thy dog that hath 
been asleep in the sun." 

"Secular" and "mundane" are the words one would natur- 
ally apply to Elizabethan society; and on the whole the attri- 
butes are just. It is only necessary to consider the places of 
fashionable resort, where all classes ventilated their opinions 
and sunned themselves, in order to be convinced of this fact. 
St. Pauls, the theatre, and the bear-garden each represent a 
facet of the variegated life of the period, and in all three 
cases the atmosphere was essentially the same — of the earth, 
earthy. St. Pauls, intimately associated with all the epoch- 



10 

making pronouncements of the Reformation since the days 
of the Henrician Settlement, suffered in Elizabeth's reign 
from the general desecration of church buildings. In vain the 
Homilies enjoined the preservation of sobriety and decorum 
within the sacred precincts: the Cathedral had become, like 
other famous churches, "a house of talking, of walking, of 
brawling, of minstrelsy, of hawks and of dogs." From being 
a house of prayer, it was now, in the expressive phrase of 
the Homilist, "a den of thieves." The middle aisle, commonly 
known as 'Duke Humphrey's walk,' or 'Paul's Walk,' was the 
daily scene of a veritable pandemonium. A place of business, 
it was also a convenient rendez-vous for the gallants, wits, 
and the riff-raff of the streets. Here too gathered the idle 
gentlewomen of the Capital. "After dinner," says Stubbs, 
"their bodies being satisfied and their heads prettily mizzled 
with wine, they walk abroad for a time, or else confer with 
their familiars ... or they sit at their doors to show their 
beauty and behold passers-by. Weary of this they take a 
walk into town," etc. In one corner of the Cathedral stood 
the lawyers "at the pillars," to receive their clients: while in 
another, hawkers exposed their wares, and indulged freely 
in their various street cries. Even the tombs and font were 
utilised as counters for the payment and receipt of accounts. 
"Lordless men" paraded the nave, offering their services for 
hire. And to increase the general confusion, horses and 
mules were led through the Cathedral as a short cut, profan- 
ing the place with filth. Outside, in the churchyard, was the 
book market of London. As many as twenty book-stalls, 
representing the leading publishing houses, clustered close up 
against the walls. Often the vaults of the sacred buildings 
were used to store the superfluous literature. Here, under 
the very eye of the clerical authorities, the 'merry' books of 
Italy were sold; and here also Shakespeare probably bought 
the Italian Romances that form the basis of so many of his 
plays. 

In the Theatre, the same secular and mundane spirit 
prevailed. The Elizabethan was nothing if not spectacular. 
Just as he loved pomp and show in his dress, loud colours and 
bizarre effects; so in the Theatre he delighted in the appeal 
to the senses, strong contrasts, and declamation. The at- 



11 

traction of Marlowe's "mighty line" was irresistible. It 
would be wrong, of course, to say that he failed to discrimin- 
ate the higher artistic values represented in a Shakespearean 
tragedy; but it should be remembered that Shakespearean 
plays were the culmination rather than the habitual level of 
the dramatic art of the time. The average taste of the 
theatre audience was on a lower plane; for the Elizabethan 
play often staged scenes that would revolt the modern public 
— scenes portraying madness, drunkenness, vice, and brutali- 
ty, that appear to us to be no fit subject for Art at all. Yet 
this must have been a considerable attraction to the bulk of the 
apprentices, mechanics, and artisan class, who patronised the 
theatre. The obvious fact is that the popularity of the stage 
lay in its direct appeal to the senses. Just as it was the 
'rough and tumble' at Paris Garden that delighted the mob — 
the 'clawing', 'roaring', 'tugging', 'tossing', and 'tumbling', of 
the bears, and the 'nimbleness' of the dogs ; so too it was the 
vehemence of the action, the license of expression and senti- 
ment, the brilliant declamation, and the fine dresses of the 
actors, that charmed the playgoers. Stubbs for all his bitter- 
ness, was not very wide of the mark when he wrote the follow- 
ing malicious passage: "The argument of tragedies is anger, 
wrath, cruelty, incest, murder; the persons and actors are 
gods, goddesses, furies, fiends, hags, kings, queens and po- 
tentates. Of comedies, the matter and ground is love, 
bawdry, cosinage, flattery, whoredom, adultery; the persons 
or agents, whores, queans, bawds, scullions, knaves, courte- 
sans, lecherous old men, amorous young men." 

On a public holiday like Shrovetide, when a horde of ap- 
prentices and artisans was let loose on the city, and flocked 
to the Theatre, the disorder must have been great. The fact 
that the theatre areas were outside the direct control of the 
city fathers — at Finsbury, Newington Butts, Southwark — 
made the playhouse a kind of safety-valve for all the pent-up 
humours of society. "Hell is broke loose," wrote Haslewood, 
"and it is good to draw all the devils into one place, so that 
we may know what the people do and find them if need be." 
Indecency among the audience was quite a common occur- 
rence, owing, probably, to the free mingling of the sexes in 
the pit, and the fact that there was no proper control of the 



12 

crowd. On the stage it was not uncommon, and had to be 
guarded against by the female part of the audience, by the 
use of masks : there being no other protection. Yet it would 
give an utterly false impression of the drama of this period 
if we did not make allowance for the difficulties under which 
the play-house laboured. It was an outcast and pariah, banned 
from the city to the no-man's land beyond the walls, — and 
identified by the puritan with all the vices and disorders of 
the age. Nevertheless in spite of obloquy it was the truest 
mirror of public taste and opinion of its day, and its amor- 
phous audiences could rise to the dizzy heights of appreciation 
demanded by a Shakespearean tragedy ! 

The prevailing moral and intellectual tone of this pic- 
turesque and vivacious society was (as we should expect,, 
singularly free and unrestrained. No heed was paid to the 
accepted standards of the past, nor was there any regard 
shewn for the admonitions of moralist or homilist. Not only 
was the pulpit studiously ignored in its efforts to stem the 
tide of blasphemy, immorality and public vice of every des- 
cription; even lay critics like Stubbs were pilloried by the 
wits as vain fools. "They speak," writes Nash, "as though 
they had been brought up all the days of their life with 
bread and water ... as though they had been eunuchs from 
their cradle, or blind from the hour of their cor seption." Of 
course, the events of the previous generation, the vast doc- 
trinal changes, the extensive secularisation of Church pro- 
perty, the growing discredit of religion, contributed greatly 
to the atmosphere of atheism and epicurism in which the 
Elizabethan lived, and moved, and had his being. The un- 
settlement of belief, combined with the unprincipled struggle 
for wealth, prepared the soil for the seeds of materialism and 
a frankly hedonist view of life. But the scape goat of the 
times, the 'whipping boy' of society, on whom all the sins of 
the nation were visited, was the Italianate Englishman. "The 
devil incarnate" in Italy, he was regarded as the corrupter of 
morals at home. "Thou comest," wrote Green, "not alone, but 
accompanied with a multitude of abominable vices hanging 
on thy bombast, nothing but infectious abuses, and vainglory, 
self-love, sodomy, and strange poisonings, wherewith thou 
hast infected this glorious isle." Ascham terms the whole 



13 

class "Knights of Circe," "Epicures in living," "Atheists in 
doctrine." They were the patrons and advocates of the 
Italian novel, and the other questionable books of the period. 
Every critic, clerical and lay, complained bitterly of the in- 
creasing vogue of these 'merry' tales. "We have heresy and 
blasphemy and paganism and bawdry committed to the press," 
cried Deringe, a Court preacher; "there is no Italian tale so 
scurrilous, or fable so odious, or action so abominable, but 
some have ventured to defend the same." Bevis of Hampton, 
Guy of Warwick, and the other medieval heroes fell into dis- 
repute before the triumphant popularity of the new 'Courts 
of Venus' and 'Castles of Love' introduced by the enterprising 
booksellers from abroad. "Yet," says Ascham, "ten Morte 
Arthures do not the tenth part so much harm as one of these 
books made in Italy and translated in England." No wonder 
the pulpit complained of the decay of true religion — of "godly 
preaching heard without remorse," of "fastings kept without 
affliction," of- "almsgiving without compassion," and of "lent 
holden without discipline." "It were better to be a piper or 
a filthy minstrel," said one ecclesiastic, "than a divine; for 
the one is heard for his ribaldry, the other hated for his gravi- 
ty, wisdom and sobriety." 

We turn now to a consideration of the reverse side of the 
shield. Balancing the brilliant display of Elizabethan Society, 
there was a growing slough of unemployment, poverty and 
misery among the lower classes. All writers of the time refer 
to it. Of course the causes were numerous and varied: a pro- 
letariate is not born in a day. A general 'dearth' or rise in 
prices, traced by Stafford to the debasement of the coinage 
of Henry VIII, and to the influx of American silver, placed 
the necessaries of life almost beyond the reach of the very 
poor. The turning of arable land into pasture — a favourite 
plan of the land-owner who found wool more valuable than 
corn from the point of view of commerce — and the consequent 
decay of agriculture, which it brought about, both cut down 
the supply of corn and turned many country labourers adrift. 
It was calculated on this head alone that, as early as 1550, 
some 50,000 ploughs were idle in England, and 300,000 per- 
sons dependent on them were thrown out of employment. 
"When gentlemen became sheep-mongers and graziers," 



14 

writes one critic, "neither cloth nor victuals could be had at a 
reasonable price." Enclosures of the common lands, moors, 
heaths, etc., where the poor were wont to pasture their cattle 
and grow the corn on which they depended as the staff of life, 
also counted for a considerable amount of the hardship of 
the time. Sometimes the encloser would argue that the older 
form of agriculture was wasteful and unprofitable. A few of 
them went as far as to say that "a superfluous augmentation 
of mankind" was not to be encouraged, because it led to the 
increase of beggars ! But the immediate result of their policy 
was not to lessen the problem of pauperism : rather to increase 
it. Stubbs was inclined to think that early and improvident 
marriages were also largely responsible for the creation of a 
pauper class. "They build up a cottage," he writes, "though 
but of elder poles in every lane end, where they live as beg- 
gars all their life. This filleth the land with such store of 
poor people that in short time (except some caution be pro- 
vided to prevent the same) it is like to grow to great poverty 
and scarceness." No doubt, too, another source of the pro- 
blem was the destruction of the monasteries, because the 
monastic institutions, whatever their spiritual condition may 
have been, were at least indulgent landlords, and helped to 
keep the country-side contented. At all events Nash', Green, 
and other writers hark back to the happier days, "when abbeys 
stood and twenty eggs could be had for a penny." The new 
owners who had supplanted the abbots, writes another critic, 
"abhor the names of monks, friars, canons, nuns, but their 
goods they greedily gripe." Undoubtedly also the prevalence 
of usury contributed to the misery, because "the shittle-witted 
fools," who lusted after the fashionable dresses of London, 
often mortgaged their estates and failed to redeem them, 
sometimes ending their days in prison, where they lay, "gyved 
and shackled" until their limbs rotted from their bodies." 
Other causes were rent-racking by covetous landlords; ex- 
cessive charges by lawyers, who apparently were "troubled 
by a heat of the liver, which makes their palms so hot, that 
to cold them they must be rubbed with the oil of angels," and 
finally, "forestalling and regrating" by merchants, who "inter- 
cept everything before it comes to market." 

Whatever the direct and immediate cause in particular 



15 

cases may have been, the dimensions of the pauper class soon 
assumed appalling proportions, and no one was prepared to 
shoulder responsibility. State action was in embryo, while 
the old medieval view that charity was an individual duty, 
based on love to God and pity to man, had lost its savour. 
Social critics, who saw the condition of the country at close 
quarters, say very little about the possibility of alleviation 
by the Government, but protest volubly against the callous 
indifference of the wealthy and well-to-do. "A poor man," 
says Green, "shall as soon break his neck as his fast at a rich 
man's door." So numerous were the poor of London that 
they slept in porches, stalls, doorways, sheep-cotes, haylofts, 
and died like dogs. "They lie in the streets," writes Stubbs, 
"upon pallets of straw, and well if they have that, or else in 
the dirt as commonly it is seen, having neither house to put 
their heads in, covering to keep them from the cold, nor to 
hide their shame withal . . . but are permitted to die in the 
streets like dogs or beasts without any mercy or compassion 
showed to them at all." The hospitals, lazar-houses and 
spittals, according to another critic, could not cope with one- 
hundredth part of the infirm and diseased— "and many lay 
dead without the walls for want of succour."* 

It is well to take these facts into account when we peror- 
ate on the "spacious days," and rhapsodise on the imaginative 
brilliance of Elizabethan genius. The Englishman of the 16th 
Century cannot be credited with a soft heart towards his un- 
fortunates. For all his intellectual greatness, his moral sym- 
pathies were no further advanced than those of a savage. 
Materialism, greed, the unprincipled scramble for wealth, 
blinded him to everything resembling social duty. The poor 
were a nuisance and poverty a disease, for which, in the in- 
scrutable providence of God, he was not responsible. 

J. B. BLACK. 

History Department, 

Queen's University. 



*Note: As we are dealing in this paper entirely with the mental atti- 
tude of Elizabethan society, and not with government policy, I have in- 
tentionally omitted to consider the governmental measures devised to cope 
with the problem of pauperism. 



No. 15, Modern British Foreign Policy, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 16, Federal Finance, by O. D. Skelton. 

No. 17, Craft-Gilds of the Thirteenth Century in Paris, by F, 
B. Millett. 

No. 18, The Co-operative Store in Canada, by H. Michell. 

No. 19, The Chronicles of Thomas Sprott, by Walter Sage. 

No. 20, The Country Elevator in the Canadian West, by W. C. 
Clark. 

No. 21, The Ontario Grammar Schools, by W. E. Macpherson. 

No. 22, The Royal Disallowance in Massachusetts, by A. G. 
Borland. 

No. 23, The Language Issue in Canada; Notes on the Language 
Issue Abroad, by 0. D. Skelton. 

No. 24, The Neutralization of States, by F. W. Baumgartner. 
No. 25, The Neutralization of States, by F. W. Baumgartner. 

No. 26, Profit-Sharing and Producers' Co-operation in Canada, 
by H. Michell. 

No. 27, Should Maximum Prices Prevail? by W. C. Clark. 

No. 28, Sir George Arthur and His Administration of Upper 
Canada, by Walter Sage. 

No. 29, Canadian Federal Finance— II, by O. D. Skelton. 

No. 30, English Courtesy Literature Before 1557, by Fred. B. 
Millett. 

No. 31, Economics, Prices and the War, by W. A. Mackintosh. 
No. 32, The Employment Service of Canada, by Bryce M. 
Stewart. 

No. 33, Allenby's First Attempt on Jerusalem: A Chapter in 
Scottish Military History, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 34, John Morley: a Study in Victorianism, by J. L. Mori- 
son. 
No. 35, Elizabethan Society— A Sketch, by J. B. Black. 



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